Mark Hoddle, director of the Center for Invasive Species Research at UC Riverside, holds a South American palm weevil on his arm on Nov. 2, 2017. UCR and a Riverside firm are teaming up to fight the weevil, a threat to the region’s iconic palms.

Mark Hoddle, an entomologist at University of California Riverside, is one of the principal players in the fight against The South American palm weevil, Thursday, November 2, 2017. The beetle is wreaking havoc on palm trees in San Diego County and threatening to blaze a destructive trail northward into Riverside and other counties. The bug is creating quite a scare, as the survival of Southern CaliforniaÕs iconic palms could be at stake. UC Riverside and a Riverside biotech company have teamed up to open up an attack against the bug deploying an environmentally friendly pest control. (John Valenzuela/Press Enterprise/SCNG)

Mark Hoddle, an entomologist at University of California Riverside, is one of the principal players in the fight against The South American palm weevil, Thursday, November 2, 2017. The beetle is wreaking havoc on palm trees in San Diego County and threatening to blaze a destructive trail northward into Riverside and other counties. The bug is creating quite a scare, as the survival of Southern CaliforniaÕs iconic palms could be at stake. UC Riverside and a Riverside biotech company have teamed up to open up an attack against the bug deploying an environmentally friendly pest control. (John Valenzuela/Press Enterprise/SCNG)

A collection of palm weevils captured in traps by Mark Hoddle, an entomologist at University of California Riverside. Hoddle is one of the principal players in the fight against The South American palm weevil, Thursday, November 2, 2017. The beetle is wreaking havoc on palm trees in San Diego County and threatening to blaze a destructive trail northward into Riverside and other counties. The bug is creating quite a scare, as the survival of Southern CaliforniaÕs iconic palms could be at stake. UC Riverside and a Riverside biotech company have teamed up to open up an attack against the bug deploying an environmentally friendly pest control. (John Valenzuela/Press Enterprise/SCNG)

A South American palm weevils is wreaking havoc on palm trees in San Diego County and threatening to blaze a destructive trail northward into Riverside and other counties. The bug is creating quite a scare, as the survival of Southern California’s iconic palms could be at stake. UC Riverside and a Riverside biotech company have teamed up to open up an attack against the bug deploying an environmentally friendly pest control, Thursday, November 2, 2017. Mark Hoddle, an entomologist at University of California Riverside’s is one of the principal players in the fight against The South American palm weevil. (John Valenzuela/Press Enterprise/SCNG)

A South American palm weevils is wreaking havoc on palm trees in San Diego County and threatening to blaze a destructive trail northward into Riverside and other counties. The bug is creating quite a scare, as the survival of Southern California’s iconic palms could be at stake. UC Riverside and a Riverside biotech company have teamed up to open up an attack against the bug deploying an environmentally friendly pest control, Thursday, November 2, 2017. Mark Hoddle, an entomologist at University of California Riverside’s is one of the principal players in the fight against The South American palm weevil. (John Valenzuela/Press Enterprise/SCNG)

A South American palm weevils is wreaking havoc on palm trees in San Diego County and threatening to blaze a destructive trail northward into Riverside and other counties. The bug is creating quite a scare, as the survival of Southern California’s iconic palms could be at stake. UC Riverside and a Riverside biotech company have teamed up to open up an attack against the bug deploying an environmentally friendly pest control, Thursday, November 2, 2017. Mark Hoddle, an entomologist at University of California Riverside’s is one of the principal players in the fight against The South American palm weevil. (John Valenzuela/Press Enterprise/SCNG)

A piece of palm tree bark with holes form the South American palm weevils. The beetle is wreaking havoc on palm trees in San Diego County and threatening to blaze a destructive trail northward into Riverside and other counties. The bug is creating quite a scare, as the survival of Southern California’s iconic palms could be at stake. UC Riverside and a Riverside biotech company have teamed up to open up an attack against the bug deploying an environmentally friendly pest control, Thursday, November 2, 2017. (John Valenzuela/Press Enterprise/SCNG)

A South American palm weevil in its cocoon found by Mark Hoddle, an entomologist at University of California Riverside. The beetle is wreaking havoc on palm trees in San Diego County and threatening to blaze a destructive trail northward into Riverside and other counties. The bug is creating quite a scare, as the survival of Southern CaliforniaÕs iconic palms could be at stake. UC Riverside and a Riverside biotech company have teamed up to open up an attack against the bug deploying an environmentally friendly pest control, Thursday, November 2, 2017. (John Valenzuela/Press Enterprise/SCNG)

A collection of South American palm weevil cocoons found by Mark Hoddle, an entomologist at University of California Riverside. The beetle is wreaking havoc on palm trees in San Diego County and threatening to blaze a destructive trail northward into Riverside and other counties. The bug is creating quite a scare, as the survival of Southern California’s iconic palms could be at stake. UC Riverside and a Riverside biotech company have teamed up to open up an attack against the bug deploying an environmentally friendly pest control, Thursday, November 2, 2017. (John Valenzuela/Press Enterprise/SCNG)

“One guy described them to me as giant brown mushrooms or giant brown umbrellas,” said Mark Hoddle, director of the Center for Invasive Species Research at UC Riverside.

Weevils get into the tops of trees, where fronds grow.

“And they turn that area into a rancid bowl of oatmeal,” Hoddle said. “Once the top is damaged, they’re done.”

So far the portrait of destruction painted by the 2-inch-long South American palm weevil with the freakish-looking snout is confined to a swath of southern San Diego County, from Imperial Beach to El Cajon.

But scientists worry the weevil, which can fly up to 15 miles in a day, will push north into Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino and Orange counties, and beyond, wiping out ornamental palms — and possibly even fruit-bearing date palms — along the way.

These two Canary Island palm trees were killed by South American palm weevils in the Bonita area of San Diego County.

“We are right at the beginning wave of the invasion right now,” he said. “But at this initial phase, it looks really bad.”

In short, the palm weevil could lay waste to the region’s palms the way the bark beetle has decimated pines in our local mountains.

The $300,000 arsenal

So, a new grant and partnership between UC Riverside and the Riverside biotech firm ISCA Technologies is all the more important, as scientists scramble to get a handle on the bug’s activities and stop it from grabbing a bigger foothold.

It was announced last week that the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research, a nonprofit group established in 2014 by Congress, awarded a $150,000 grant to fund research. According to a news release, the grant is being matched by UCR, ISCA, the California Date Commission and the Bard Valley Medjool Date Growers Association, providing a total of $300,000 for efforts to contain this emerging pest.

The university and ISCA are teaming up to develop formulations from naturally occurring compounds to lure weevils to small but lethal doses of pesticide. Through this approach, the release states, less than one-hundredth of the volume of pesticide in traditional spray applications is used.

They also plan to develop weevil repellents, said Agenor Mafra-Neto, chief executive officer and president of ISCA Technologies.

And he said the team is putting traps out to monitor the weevil migration.

This jar holds a collection of South American palm weevils captured in traps by Mark Hoddle at UC Riverside. The bug is creating quite a scare after killing hundreds of trees in San Diego County.

Hoddle said the target of the campaign should not be confused with another bug that briefly created a scare in Laguna Beach a few years back.

That bug, he said, was misidentified as the red palm weevil. It turned out to be a coconut palm weevil from Indonesia, he said.

“It only killed a few palm trees,” Hoddle said. “We basically contained that invasion and we eradicated it in 2015.”

Too late to eradicate?

Hoddle said the South American palm weevil appears to be a more serious threat. In fact, he said, the bug may already be so entrenched that it’s too late to try to eradicate the bug. Scientists may have to default to a strategy of containment.

As for the amount of money set aside for the containment effort, it may not sound like much. But Mafra-Neto said it is enough to fund a year-long campaign that will run through September 2018.

And Hoddle said it will provide funding for crucial monitoring. He said little has been done so far to track the bug’s movements and scientists aren’t sure how widely it has penetrated the region.

“We are really concerned that it might get out to the Coachella Valley and pose an unprecedented threat to the date palms,” Hoddle said.

Hoddle said scientists are particularly worried about that threat because date palms are closely related to Canary Island palms.

Open the window

And the threat hardly stops there. Hoddle said the weevil has dined on other varieties when the supply of its favorite flavor of palm tree, the Canary Island, has been exhausted.

A piece of palm tree bark with holes underscores the damage the South American palm weevil is capable of doing. Scientists worry the bug could devastate the region’s iconic palms.

In Mexico, weevils have killed fan palms in Rosarito Beach and coconut palms in Manzanillo, he said.

“Imagine what Victoria Avenue (in Riverside) would look like with no Canary Island palms. Or downtown Riverside,” Hoddle said. “They are everywhere.”

Picture other palms becoming brown mushrooms, too.

For Mafra-Neto, it’s not an imaginary scenario. In 2016 he attended a conference in Tunisia and saw firsthand some of the thousands of palms around the Mediterranean Sea that have been “decapitated by these weevils.”

“Here, when you look outside, what do you see? You see palms all over the place. It’s like the quintessential picture of Southern California,” Mafra-Neto said.

“We want to make sure that when you open the window 20 years from now you’ll still see palm trees.

Dave is a general assignment reporter based in Riverside, writing about a wide variety of topics ranging from drones and El Nino to trains and wildfires. He has worked for five newspapers in four states: Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona and California. He earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from Colorado State University in 1981. Loves hiking, tennis, baseball, the beach, the Lakers and golden retrievers. He is from the Denver area.

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